The Gotham Roguesby
Chris Dee

And
So It Begins

Salutations!
Under other circs, I would give you 12 hours
Regardless of the spat.
Riddles are a tricky business, and not
Everyone has the gift right off the bat.
Nevertheless, you threatened flowers,
Destroyed a few and that.
Earns you only six hours
(Really, Carmine, it's a gift, take it.)

Deliver what I'm asking by the hour named,
Or
Rimley Warehouse will be forfeit,
Orchid's Revenge will be proclaimed.
The amount I want and when and where is spelled out
Here plain as day. If you're smart enough to solve it,
You’ll escape our wrath today.

The neighborhood near the opera house was among the
most desirable in Gotham. Twelve hours before a glassy-eyed Sil Barese
would enter Carmine Falcone’s study with a green envelope clutched in his
chubby fingers, a manhole cover clanked in front of the prestigious Opera
Row townhouses. It clanked again, moved, lifted, and finally a wet, slimy
and reeking Batman emerged. He cursed under his breath as the summoned
Batmobile turned into the intersection. There would be no returning to the
opera now. He couldn’t go anywhere until he’d showered. Even trying to
patrol was pointless with the stench of hydraulics and sewage preceding him
by several feet.

If he went straight to the penthouse and bathed, he
could still make the rendezvous with Catwoman on the Moxton Building at
midnight—when he realized he didn’t have to. Her silhouette was just coming
into view a few stories above where the Batmobile had turned. She must have
bagged the opera when she finished with Nigma, changed into costume and kept
watch on the Batmobile. Prudence suggested “not seeing her,” getting into
the car alone, driving off and debriefing her later… but those were not the
priorities of a grown man with a war to prevent. He waited and did his
best not to react as she hit the radius of the odor.

“Wow, what the hell did he do to you?!”

“Deathtrap in the hydraulics under the stage, escape
through the sewer, you don’t need the details.”

“No, I don’t,” she coughed. “Anyway, um, it didn’t go
well...”

Twelve hours later, Sil Barese entered Falcone’s study,
murmuring about ‘the green.’ He clutched an envelope of that color along
with a yellow rose. It took Bane’s strength to force his fingers open to
get the envelope, and even then, Sil passed out before he’d give up the
rose. Bane stepped over him and tore open the envelope.

Six hours and one minute after that, the men in the
Rimley Street warehouse began to feel a chill. Paulie went to check the
thermostat when Pete noticed the windows were iced over. He ran to the
door, only to find it open onto a wall of glass a foot thick… or what looked
like glass at first glance. In the second it took for the shock to wear
off, Pete realized it was a wall of ice. He fired a few rounds into it
without making a dent, while Paulie, Jake and Ron all ran to the back.

The ice was still closing in on the much larger loading
dock entrance, taunting them with a comfortably wide escape route—if only
they could get the rolling door open. The sudden drop in temperature made
it agonizingly slow to lift. The men squirmed out the bottom as best they
could, no one thinking to call Pete, still firing madly to get out the
front. He had traded his Glock for one of the many Uzis on the premises,
and he was making so much noise blasting away at the ice prison, he didn’t
hear any of the newcomers come up behind him. Not until the already cold
air around him dropped another ten degrees as Mr. Freeze approached.

“That’s no way to treat a perfectly fine wall of ice,”
Victor observed, sticking his freeze ray into Pete’s nose.

Pete considered himself a tough guy, but he reacted
exactly like a hundred terrified victims had when he’d been the one sticking
a gun in their faces. He froze, paralyzed with fear, his eyes riveted on
the end of the barrel.

Mr. Freeze turned to the others he came in with, but
Pete couldn’t manage to pull his eyes off the end of the gun in order to see
who they were.

“You want him?” Victor asked casually.

“Why would anyone want him?” said a low, female voice,
dripping with contempt.

He slipped in nose plugs while Poison Ivy conjured
thoughts of lying back and pleasuring herself on a bed of thick velvety
moss. The frigid air warmed with the thick, husky odors of steamy jungle
matrix, of leaves moist with dew drops and sweet blossoms burgeoning with
nectar.

“Well that’s done,” Two-Face said dryly once Pete
assumed that unfocused stare of unworthy adoration they all knew so well.
“Tell Nigma the warehouse is ours. Once the *koff* air is clear, he can
send in the others to come in and start setting up.”

Matches Malone may not have been the most connected guy
in the Gotham underworld, but even he knew that the old Irish mobs,
ill-equipped to survive in a criminal landscape dominated by Colombians and
Russians, had been absorbed into the Falcone Crime Family. Matches had no
way of knowing that Carmine had put Anthony Marcuso in charge of Westies—nor
would he have cared. Falcone and his godson inhabited a criminal
stratosphere high above sewer rats like Matches Malone.

But Batman knew. He had a hunch that the Westies were
Marcuso’s reward for early success when Falcone first started promoting
him. There was a shift in activity around the Downpatrick Carpentry Club
immediately after a ‘pump and dump’ operation folded in NoLiTa and shortly
before Marcuso’s engagement to Susannah Pelacci. It looked remarkably like
Carmine was grooming the kid, giving him a mid-level operation to run
unsupervised, the same way Batman had tested Robin before advancing him to a
new tier of training and responsibility. And then, quite possibly, giving
him an extra income as tacit approval for the marriage.

The reasons why Carmine might have given the Westies to
Marcuso was conjecture, but Batman had confirmed that Anthony Marcuso was,
in fact, in charge shortly before the ill-fated wedding. That meant the
Downpatrick was the place to begin, and he only needed a cover story for
Matches to be poking around. At one time, he would have made up a story
involving a loan shark or a numbers racket, but the names and particulars
were always changing for that kind of thing. It would take a few hours
rounding up the right kind of scum and beating the specifics out of them.
Not a lot of time, but… with Selina in his life now, there was no need for
even that small expenditure of Batman’s time. He could create the cover
story this afternoon, Matches could hit the Downpatrick by seven, and Batman
wouldn’t have to take a minute out of his regular patrol. He would also get
to see Selina’s reaction to being asked, which was sure to be entertaining.

“I don’t understand why we can’t have the Z do this,”
Scarecrow grumbled. It had been a long time since he set up a chem lab
himself, and a warehouse that Carmine Falcone had been using as… as a
warehouse was hardly his idea of a proper workspace.

“They’re busy,” Eddie said, too busy for the moment to
present his thoughts as questions. “I don’t plan to keep using greened
guidos as messengers. It’s boring. As soon as the Z are done setting up my
project, we can have them help out here. But I’d like to have this place
established as our new HQ by then, so we might just put them to work on the
next one. Second riddle, we’ll go for that bookie joint he’s got over the
Wild Deuce club. For Harvey.”

“Why can’t I use Pammy’s new pet,” Jonathan asked, not
really caring about the riddle delivery system for tomorrow’s clue when
he had heavy boxes to move today.

“Need him to do the inventory. Falcone mostly kept
guns here. Pete, Pagliaccia and Harvey have the best knowledge to identify
different types on sight. And I’ve got Harv on a much more important job
right now, so it’s got to be Pagliaccia and Pete taking inventory.”

Jonathan’s brow shot up under his mask, which Eddie
correctly interpreted as a question about the vital task he’d assigned to
Two-Face.

“Keeping Ivy happy.”

“You want me to what?” Selina asked, looking at the
brassy red wig which, together with a vividly blue suit, constituted her
disguise as Georgina Barnes, the identity with which she’d infiltrated the
financial world on more than one occasion.

“Just the wig,” Bruce repeated. “Not the suit. Simple
t-shirt and jeans, something you’d wear on a date to an amusement park. And
trashier make-up.”

“Trashy make-up,” Selina said dully. “For the Wall
Street intern.”

“No, Georgina Barnes is Wall Street. This is Gina
O’Malley, a grifter who only becomes Georgina Barnes when she needs to get
into places like BankLink and CashPulse.”

Selina’s lips curled into the unique smile she had
whenever Batman wanted her to do something criminal.

“Who will I be conning?” she asked in her bedroom
voice.

“Don’t get excited,” he warned. “I just need to take a
few pictures.”

“Ah, then somebody I conned already is looking for me,”
she smiled with just as much satisfaction.

Beneath Batman’s disapproving scowl, the part of
Bruce’s mind that would later play Matches grinned in reply. He hadn’t
decided yet why Matches was looking for Gina: if she had double-crossed him,
cheated him, or just up and disappeared when the wrong people started asking
questions about something she was involved in that he had no knowledge of.
The reason didn’t matter, since it was a given that whatever Matches told
the Westies was sure to be a lie.

Bruce decided now—or actually, Matches decided
as he watched Selina put on the wig and fuss with the red locks with that
naughty-girl grin—that whatever the Gina-Matches history was, she’d broken
his heart.

None of the men who escaped from the Rimley Warehouse
were aware their boss had picked a fight with theme rogues. They assumed
that if they reported the store of guns and unlaundered cash had been lost
to a creeping ice flow, Carmine would naturally think they’d made the whole
thing up to cover their own pilfering. That would be the last anyone would
see of them, except a few fish at the bottom of the East River. So, like
any sensible crooks, they packed into a van and headed for Toledo. If Bane
hadn’t sent a man down to Rimley Street, they still wouldn’t know the place
had been taken.

They still didn’t know exactly how it went down,
but they knew none of the men they sent had reported back. The first was at
Mercy Hospital being treated for hypothermia, the second and third were in
Arkham, having reportedly run into a Dairy Queen screaming about the
“monster rat” and “abominable snowman” that were chasing them.

Carmine had ground his fist into the table and snarled
that he would send a legion to get his property back. Bane let him snarl
and curse all he pleased—let him get it out of his system—then he imposed
his veto.

“You would play their game, señor. You would
waste men and resources learning only what they wish you to learn: that they
have defenses in place to keep the warehouse. You would do better to
prepare for today’s riddle. If I read this first one correctly, they plan
to send you one every day. Solve it, and you escape that day’s action.
Fail to, and they strike whatever target they have announced.”

“That’s not ‘playing their game?’” Carmine asked with
an acid sneer.

“It is playing along, but with purpose, not
merely reacting the way an animal responds to the whip—”

“Now look here—”

“Let me finish, señor. If we answer a single
one of these challenges, we will buy time. We will have gained a day when
we know they will not act, and we will be ready to make a definite
strike of our own. A target of our choosing, not dancing to their tune.”

“You have something in mind?”

“This… ‘Riddler’ is not a man of action. He fights
with his mind. You do not hurt such a man by breaking his bones. You
remove the tools he relies on. These rogues have ‘suppliers’ like any army
must. There’s an old man with a workshop, and a group of worker bees that
call themselves ‘The Z.’”

“Yesss, I like the sound of that,” Carmine said,
drawing out the first word as if contemplating a particularly savory dish
described by a waiter.

Bane noted the hunger in the words, correctly
identified it as blood lust, and thought it best to clarify a point that
should be obvious to any civilized being.

“There is no honor in doing violence on an old man,” he
said indignantly. “You will take steps to ensure he is not in his workshop
when you blow it up. This ‘Z,’ they are—”

He was interrupted by a knock. Carmine called for
whoever it was to enter, and as the door opened, they saw it was his cook.
She held a large piece of brown paper, torn from a brown paper bag.

“I was doing the day’s shopping like always, Mr. Falcone, and they didn’t have any plastic. They used the old paper ones and
double bagged to make up for it. Look what I found written on the outside
of the inner bag. It’s addressed to you, sir.”

Carmine reached for it and read, his face growing
redder by the second.

We need to find a better way,
It’s boring, writing it out.
Let paper have its last hooray.
Digital will be my next rout.

Doubly fitting, don’t you think?
Even though I had to
Use paper still today and wink,
Cause binary would’ve been better for two.
Even so, you get another day to practice. (You’re welcome.)

Matches was more at home at the Downpatrick Club than
he ever was at the Iceberg. These were his kind of people. He flashed
Gina’s picture, said they’d worked together in St. Louis and figured she’d
beaten him back to Gotham. When nobody recognized her, he showed them
another picture with her all gussied up like some snooty banker. Still
nobody recognized her. Matches had kept his thumb carefully over the name
on what was obviously a fake ID card from some outfit called BankLink, so
Mitch jostled the dumb lug’s elbow to make him drop the card. He bought
Matches a pint to make up for it, picked the card off the floor and, before
handing it back, saw the name was Georgina Barnes. Mitch remarked on the
quality of the fake, and since it was now obvious what business Gina was in,
Matches said she was ‘a good girl,’ in that she’d always pay the local boss
his cut of the grift. So if none of them knew her at the Downpatrick, that
just meant she hadn’t hit town yet.

Or if she was here, she hadn’t scored yet, one of them
noted.

Matches gave the guy a nasty look, then shook his
head. It seemed like to him it was a given: if Gina was in town, she’d be
conning somebody, she’d be successful, and she’d have been in to pay the
Gotham bigwig—turned out to be a guy called Marcuso—his cut.

It was obvious to everyone that Matches Malone had an
exaggerated idea of this woman’s talents, but opinion was split as to why.
Either it was blind admiration ‘cause he was banging her, or delusion ‘cause
he’d been stung and guys like that think anybody who got the better of them
has to be a fuckin’ genius. Either way, they figured it’d be worth seeing
when he caught up with this lady, so they had no objection to Matches
hanging around.

When no ransom arrived by the deadline, the gamblers at
the Wild Deuce gaming rooms became too cautious to make a single bet. It
really was insanity, risking your money that way, and a small riot erupted
when a number of regulars tried to cancel bets they’d already placed. When
the police arrived, they not only found Falcone’s men too terrified to put
up a fight, they found several crates of handguns and ammo from the Rimley
warehouse that the wise guys themselves didn’t seem to know about.

At the warehouse, Two-Face, Ivy, Harley, Scarecrow and
Roxy were huddled around a police band, listening to the chatter. Eddie
watched them from a distance, breaking into collective cheers and
high-fiving each other as various details came to light. He could have
joined in the fun, but he wasn’t in the mood. These first steps had been
tedious. He was anxious to get into the good stuff, but it couldn’t be
helped. In a battle against the mobs, a battle asserting the dominance of
the Theme Rogue, it would have been unthinkable to rush in and ignore the
Day-2 angle for Two-Face. Also, Carmine Falcone was no Batman, and
allowances had to be made. There was a learning curve with riddles. Eddie
could only hope the slow ramp up was enough. Soon, the battle would begin
in earnest.

There was another round of raucous laughter from the
group at the police radio. You’d think they had been SmileXed from the
happy grins on everyone’s faces… which reminded him. Joker and Pagliaccia
were out making arrangements for tomorrow’s little surprise, so he only had
an hour or two to settle things on another front.

He stood, feeling a little too much like an RA in a
college dorm, and rearranged what he intended to say in the few steps it
took him to reach the group. His arrival was greeted with cheers, and, as
the architect of the night’s triumph, he indulged in a bow before
getting down to business.

“What is the difference between The Riddler and those
rolling nightclubs on the back of tractor trailers?” he asked impishly. “The
one hates to party with the brake on, and the other hates to break up the
party. But I must. Pammy, Harv, run down to the Wild Deuce and, as soon as
the cops have cleared out, replace all the police tape with vines and bring
back anything useful the cops left behind. Jonathan, ring up Oswald and see
how much he wants in reparations for all that damaged gold leaf at the
Iceberg, and then put all your behavioral psychology to work on getting him
down to a reasonable figure.”

They all left on their assignments, leaving Eddie alone
with Harley, who looked up expectantly.

“Nuthin’ for me to do?” she asked hopefully.

“I thought I’d make a sandwich. Care to join?” he said
cheerily.

Harley followed and, since she had been the one to
stock the makeshift kitchen, she did most of the running around getting the
ingredients from the not-always-obvious places she’d stored them. Eddie
made smalltalk up until they got through slicing the bread, then with the
knife safely stowed away, he segued to his real subject.

“I was wondering what you thought of that Pagliaccia,”
he remarked casually.

“Yeah, sad,” Harley oozed, staring at the sliced ham as
if she was a Kryptonian trying to fry it with her heat vision.

“Of course, you’d be the one to realize that,” Eddie
nodded admiringly. “You are the trained psychologist, after all. I’m just
the wordplay guy. Of course you’d be the one to realize how poor
Susannah is deluding herself that she has any real interest in Joker.
Trying so desperately to convince herself, to escape the pain of it all.”

“The pain?” Harley said uncertainly.

“Left at the altar that way by her one true love.”

Harley squeaked.

“And it’s not like you can just ‘replace’ your one true
love,” Eddie noted, but his voice seemed to fade, replaced in her mind’s ear
with the sales girl at Aria Bridal Boutique, showing her the gowns and
accessories that could be adapted so easily to her carnival theme. How
she’d smiled at the idea of cotton candy canapés and carney game
decorations… It would have been the very same salesgirl that helped
Susannah. She’d chosen a lot more satin and lace than Harley would have,
but it was all so pretty that day at the SoHo ballroom, Harley had been
so sure it would inspire Mistah J to pop the question. And then, what
did he say? He said there’d never be a wedding, said it right in front
of everyone! Left at the altar by her one true love. By her one
true love!

“That’s true, you can never replace your one and
only,” Harley said with a sudden spark of realization. It said a lot about
the girl that she picked Mistah J to be her rebound guy. He was the
bestest, most splendiferous guy on the planet, and if only it wasn’t True
Love, he would make any woman mad with joy. But even Puddin’ was no match
for True Love. Poor Susannah!

“And of course you’re a woman, too,” Eddie said sadly.
“Women are so much more sensitive about these things. A dumb oaf
like me thinks if the last guy didn’t work out, you can always have
another. Like an hors d'oeuvre!”

“Oh but you can’t,” Harley said earnestly. “You can
never replace your one true Puddin’.”

Eddie considered this, head tilted thoughtfully.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said finally, then a
grateful nod as he added, “Thank you for setting me straight about that.”

Though he wore a thoughtful pout appropriate to the sad
conversation, inwardly Edward Nigma beamed. Disaster averted. Pagliaccia’s
intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the mafia was too good a
resource to lose. It was doubly valuable since the mobs didn’t know they
had her. But Harley Quinn was one of them as no Janey-come-lately would
ever be. They couldn’t lose her, nor could they have her attacking
Pagliaccia every ten minutes with that pirate-cry YARRR. The only solution
was to make peace between them, and the only way to do that was to play on
Harley’s romantic streak. How is a romantic like a maple tree? You tap
them just so to get the sap!

“Don’t worry, Eddie. Doris will come back one day,
you’ll see. True love always wins out in the end.”

Inner Eddie’s beaming smile faded. He clutched his
chest like a man having a heart attack, spasmed a few times, and finally
fell down dead as his outer self looked blankly at Harley Quinn.

“That sandwich looks really good. You gonna eat it
all?”

He shook his head dully, Harley took half of his
sandwich onto her plate and trotted off happily.

Anthony Marcuso liked to check in with the Westies two
or three times a week. He usually didn’t stay long, but tonight, since
there was a new guy, he stuck around to look over this Matches Malone for
himself. Mitch and Pat both said he was okay. Skate thought he would be
okay if he got this grifter broad out of his system, but until then, not
reliable. Punchy thought he needed to get laid. Dinny thought he was on
the dumb side but good people. Jimmy-P thought he was smart but unlucky.

Anthony decided he agreed with Mitch and Pat. Malone
was okay. Respectful. Something Anthony always liked to see. He didn’t
show the girl’s photo first thing like he had with the others. Anthony was
a boss, and Malone waited to be asked. When Anthony didn’t recognize her,
they chatted a few more minutes. It came out that Matches Malone had done a
few stints “henching” for theme criminals. That’s when Anthony decided to
take a liking to the guy, cancel his plans for the rest of the evening and
buy a fresh round of drinks.

Malone didn’t have much specific intel, it was
obvious that what little he knew was years out of date. But he had insights,
a view into that world of capes and costumes. It would be very useful in
the coming weeks. Matches even said as much, without realizing what he was
saying:

“When one a them guys like the Joker is riled, the
difference between the guys who make it through and the ones who don’t is
per-spective.” He pronounced it with a strange emphasis, like it was the
only long word he knew.

“A guy like the Joker” had been riled—the Joker
himself, in fact, so it was easy to superimpose the delicate triangle onto
Anthony’s own circumstances: enraged rogue, the intended target of their
rage, and the technically-criminal but comparatively-innocent bystander
trapped in the middle. He began to see that the way for him to survive
all this—and maybe come out on top himself—was to do what Roman couldn't:
Remove Joker from the playing field. Prove to Uncle Carmine that he was
useful and resourceful—and to anyone else that might be watching, that
Anthony Marcuso was a force to be reckoned with.

He would have to make overtures. Get the Joker to a
sitdown. Make a separate peace.

How exactly did one ‘make overtures’ to the Joker?

There was a lot of hugging when Joker returned with
Pagliaccia. Harley was eager to make up for lost time, bonding with her
spiritual sister. Joker looked confused, but he didn’t seem to care. Ivy
looked confused too, but once she saw that Harley’s turnaround on Pagliaccia
did not extend to Joker, she didn’t care either. Two-Face watched the pair
of twin harlequins with the same lustful glint they all remembered whenever
Double Dare came to the Iceberg. Eddie was man enough that he could
appreciate the idea of twins. He could understand Harvey’s
appreciation. But he himself had other priorities at the moment, and he
wasn’t about to risk the doristraction. It was time for the next war
council, and he knew the Z had arrived that afternoon and made up for lost
time setting up a war room. They sectioned off a corner of the warehouse,
put in a conference table, comfortable chairs and, in typical Z fashion,
equipped each place at the table with its own gaming laptop preloaded with
World of Warcraft (w/ six month subscription, prepaid), Star Wars: The Old
Republic (w/ six month subscription, prepaid), VOIP headset, a back
scratcher, a vibrating foot massage, Gotham Rogues stadium cushion, and a
box lunch from The Rising Fire sports bar.

Eddie shook his head in wonder, unable to guess what
this collection of extras was going to cost him—and then remembering the
warehouse contained four cartons of unlaundered Falcone cash. He decided
he’d pay them with that.

He took his place at the head of the table and rapped
his cane authoritatively on the end, so the summons could be heard
throughout the warehouse. Selina had often remarked how cats do not “come
when called,” but if they think they might be interested in what you’re
doing, they’ll amble over into your general vicinity—in their own time—just
to make it absolutely clear that they’re here on their terms and
not yours. Rogues, Eddie noted, were the same. No one came directly, but
pre-ambling movements had begun.

Pagliaccia, Oswald, and Harvey were the three that
Eddie cared about. They were the ones who could make a reasonable
intellectual contribution. Joker naturally assumed he was the one who was
invited, not his sidekick, so he was there. Harley came over as soon as she
saw Pagliaccia was at the table, elbowed Joker out of the way and took the
seat beside her. Ivy came over with Harvey (those two suddenly seemed to be
joined at the hip, Eddie noticed). Crane didn’t look like he planned to
leave his experiments. Victor showed no signs of having heard. Roxy was
talking to Matt Hagen and neither showed any signs of breaking things up to
come join them. Oswald was playing cards with Ventriloquist, Hugo, Firefly,
and Maxie Zeus. Eddie didn’t want any of that lot, except Oswald,
and there was no telling who might tag along if he called to Oswald
personally, so he decided not to prod. He’d talk to Ozzy later if he wanted
to run anything by him.

As expected, Pagliaccia had the most to offer in terms
of sensitive places to sting:

“First, blow covers. Nothing fracks things up like
someone drawing attention to your ‘secret’ dealer, body shop, whatever.
Even paid off cops have a hard time lookin’ the other way if there’s a neon
sign hanging overhead: STOLEN CARS STRIPPED HERE. Ya know what I mean?”

Harvey started to chuckle.

“She means that figuratively, but it would be pretty
funny to do it literally.”

“On it!” Joker said, raising his hand like an
over-eager student. “Morey’s House of Neon, owes me a favor.”

Harley shot him a look. She leaned forward, to speak
to him past Pagliaccia who sat between them.

“Morey owes you a favor?” she said severely. “Morey’s
still alive and kicking? I thought you gave him a ‘barrel of laughs.’ I
thought we agreed on that.”

“C’mon, Harls, it was just a joke.”

“Wasn’t a very funny joke.”

Joker started giggling, and Pagliaccia leaned forward
to talk to everyone else at the table. “No one cares about the small fry,”
she said, while Joker and Harley leaned back and started cross-talking
behind her back. “Mules can be replaced within hours, and guys like
Cookie Dough’s dentist—”

“He’s harmless, Harls.”

“So to annoy them, do things to supplies and operations
that are slightly larger. Drug shipments go ‘missing,’ favorite meeting
places burn down just before they get used, gambling debts can't be
collected because the person disappeared…”

“Harmless?! Easy for you to say. It wasn’t you
he was leering at.”

“And since everybody answers to someone, the middle men
will be shittin’ themselves because that missing shipment or uncollected
debt is coming out of their soft ‘n squishy parts.”

“Take it as a compliment, Harls.”

“And if you’re really lucky, the big man might decide
there has to be a mole for all this stuff to be happening all at once. Once
that shit starts, everybody will be pointing to their neighbor to save their
squishy parts. ‘Missing money boss? I think Manny may have been dipping his
beak.’”

“Why do men always think it’s an honor to be drooled
over?”

“Why do women think it’s an insult?”

“Now you guys won’t want to do this, ‘cause you like
signing your names ta stuff, but the absolute best is if you can do
your thing and blame it on a third group that nobody trusts. Street gangs
or bikers. ‘Get a couple outta town smokes to nick the take from a backroom
and Whammo! Your problem got a problem with the street scum, and you might
be able to help ‘cause your ass is as lily white as his!’”

The Rogues all stared in open-mouthed horror. Ivy
wasn’t sure if she was more offended by the bald-faced racism or the
spineless cowardice wanting someone else to take the blame for your crime.
Eddie was disgusted at the idea of committing a crime you didn’t want credit
for. The very idea of blame and not credit for a crime, did
these mobsters have no self-respect? Two-Face took the racism and lack of
criminal pride for granted, but he was appalled that Joey the Bull hadn’t
taken any pains to shield his daughter from the details of his criminal
enterprise.

“We should have gotten rid of these low-lifes a long
time ago,” Ivy said finally.